Code Name: Feral Claw
by Tiamat Drache
Summary: With the Professor seemingly stopping at nothing short of his goal in discovering Magneto's lair and the defection of Remy LeBeau, Mystique finds herself trying to reach out to Kurt with her ace in the hole: a pet project she has created and trained specifically to combat and appeal to the X-men, another shapeshifter to keep them busy. Is this enough to distract them?


"And that is yet another account of the disappearances attributed to the man-eating menace, a leopard said to have taken up mankind as easy prey."

The local news was clear as a bell to the hunter, even as he cursed his own inability to understand it fully: his native language being French. But he'd come to his town specifically looking for a guide as well as supplies for his upcoming hunt. This was good news for one of his occupation: any creature who'd preyed upon humans was fir game as far was he was concerned, and if local poachers hadn't beaten him to it, it was his chance to score a new trophy and perhaps collect a reward.

Meanwhile, another pair of eyes scanned the bulletin board, more out of habit than anything else, doubting it would be so easy to locate his quarry. Still, maybe he could find something that would yield a clue: a headline that would give him an idea of where to focus his search. So far he'd kept silent on his opinion of the Professor's directive to use Rogue as a sort of mental dousing rod to locate Magneto's base of operations in the Sahara desert, but he had his reasons for going along with the rest of the group on this mission. The Professor had specified that Rogue and Gambit be part of the excursion: Rogue for her memories and the former thief as one of his field experiences. Since the Cajun had been participating the in the Danger Room training exercises as a team leader, the next logical step would see him going on regular missions with the away team members, especially as the core team became accustomed to each other's powers and personalities.

Logan wasn't sure how he felt about Gambit as far as the Professor was concerned. There was the fact that he had been part of Magneto's strike force before deciding to quit the team as he'd claimed he had. That was entirely too convenient to be true if you asked him. Something about him had changed that was for sure, and he'd taken to his probationary status on the team like a fish to water. Logan wasn't sure how much of what the former sneak thief chose to show the rest of the X-men was genuinely him or not, but Storm, for one had vouched for him, and he respected her too much to challenge her endorsement. Besides, he wasn't too sure nowadays if his objections to Gambit were unfounded suspicions borne of the Cajun's tendency to take physical liberties with the females of the team. This included Jean, and he knew Cyclops had bitten his tongue more than once to keep from protesting what the Professor had explained was a natural extension of his charm, an ability that worked on an emotional level. He had qualms about that, but he was quite certain that if and when Gambit overstepped his boundaries, he would be there to put him back in his place.

"Herr Logan, you are perhaps trying to locate Magneto on the bulletin board?"

Speaking of being in the right place...

He growled and shook his head, turning to narrow his eyes at Kurt Wagner, aka Nightcrawler. Here was some more emotional baggage, the blue teleporter was the direct relative of Magneto's right hand, the son of the shapeshifting mutant, Mystique.

His irritation was due to Kurt having successfully snuck up on him, so to speak. Due to him being blue, tailed, and lacking two fingers on each hand, not to mention another on each foot, he was equipped with an image inducer: a watch that projected a holographic image of a normal human being. He'd been so lost in his musings that he hadn't paid attention to Kurt's particular scent signature: a smoking fondness for brimstone, courtesy of the other dimension he utilized when he teleported.

"Thought I told ya to stay back at camp with Beast."

"Ja, that you did, but the doctor, he sent me in here to tell you that we were leaving to go back to the main camp. There is apparently something else that requires our attention."

"Hmm, something more than Magneto and Mistique then."

"Ja."

"Okay, must be very important for him to send you, elf."


End file.
